Amazon announced it is raising the price of its Prime membership from 99 to 119 its first price hike since March 2014 According to CNBC the company revealed the price increase during its first quarter earnings call Amazon attributed the increase to the services rising costs although it didnt reveal how much the service costs to run A few months ago the eCommerce giant raised Primes monthly membership from 1099 per month to 1299 per month an 18 percent increase New users will pay 119 for Prime starting on May 11 while existing Prime members have until June 16 to renew their membership at the current 99 price-point The company has worked hard to make Prime worth the cost In fact analysts estimated that Amazon spent 45 billion on non-sports programming in 2017 and CEO Jeff Bezos joked that Amazon was the first company to use a Golden Globe to sell toilet paper after its show Transparent won the award in 2015 Its efforts do seem to be paying off with research showing that Prime members spend nearly double what non-members do per year on the site On the earnings call Amazons Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said The value of Prime to customers has never been greater And the cost is also high as we pointed out especially with shipping options and digital benefits we continue to see rises in costs So effective May 11 were going to increase the price of our US annual plan from 99 to 119 for new members The new price will apply to renewals starting on June 16 Prime provides a unique combination of benefits and we continue to invest in making this Prime program even more valuable for our members As a reminder we havent increased the US annual price Prime since our single increase which was in March of 2014 In Amazons first quarter earnings it reported that its subscription services revenue which includes Prime memberships grew 60 percent to 31 billion and its earnings-per-share more than doubled since last year